Dark Horizons

March was a great month for Dark Horizons Mechanized Corps, not only did we add a lot of great players but we began to finalize and implement one of our persistent online multi-player features of the game which we are calling “Faction Wars”. We were also able to make some progress toward cross platform play.

Because Faction Wars is such a huge addition to the game we are going to post a 2 part DEV DIARY for April leading up to the 0.0.8.0 release which will have the next big phase of Faction Wars.

For part 1, we are going to discuss some of the systems we are adding that will tie both Faction Wars and single player aspects of the game, this focuses around earning and spending Credits as part of the game experience.

Credits and how you earn them.

Credits are a currency that you can only earn by playing the game, you cannot buy them with real money, via the persistent multiplayer portion of the game (Faction Wars), online play, or through playing offline (single player) missions.

Players will earn credits based on both their performance and their team’s performance in-game. This includes factors such as number of kills or assists the player gets, whether the player’s team was successful, credits for salvage for the winning team (a credit bounty for each enemy mech destroyed by your team) and amount of damage inflicted. (Mockup of new results screen below).

(note: this is purely a mockup, though its close to the final in-game layout)

[b]Will there be other ways to earn credits?[/b]

The answer to this is yes there will be a couple other ways. All players will begin with enough credits to build out a couple of custom mech configurations which will help them get started. Players will also earn credits each day that they log into game (as a stipend from the merc guild or your selected faction that you fight for in Faction Wars).

There were also be other additional method for earning credits in future releases (beyond release 0.1.0.0) which include, but are not limited to:

Player market (the ability to sell parts and builds)

More complex salvage system

Spending Credits

As we previously mentioned one of the uses for the player to use Credits on will be building mechs! Currently in-game you can build as many chassis as possible with no limits. As a planned feature, with the implementation of Faction Wars, players will now earn credits and then spend those building out their mechs. The following item categories will cost credits:

mech chassis

weapons

equipment (targeting laser, ammo deployer, jumpjet, etc…)

engines

extra armor

additional ammo (future feature)

So essentially every component used in building your mech out.

Future updates:

Squad upgrades

Custom mech builds

Additional mech slots

and more…

Can you try out a config before purchasing?

This feature will come in a future release, but until then we will allow players to sell back the build at full price for an unspecified time period while we pull in analytic data to ensure that your credits earned is balanced with your credits spend.

With that said you also can sell just the base chassis of a build and strip the weapons and put them into your inventory (for use later on a future mech config that the player will want to create). A mockup of this functionality is as follows:

Once an items is in the player’s inventory it can be used in future builds without any additional costs, or the player can choose to sell the item on their own.

In Closing

So that is the credits and inventory systems at a high level. Please feel free to post questions or make suggestions in the forums. http://steamcommunity.com/app/266470/discussions/0/618460171315113977/

Tune in next week, we will be posting details on the rest of the upcoming 0.0.8.0 patch including:

Faction Wars, Balance of Power map

Faction bonuses for territory control (XP and Credits bonuses)

New in-game lobby layout

New AI and default config layouts

Status on some other items

New battlefields

Linux update

New team member introductions

Upcoming events

May Faction War Fridays! We will be hosting Friday events again focused on the start of the 2nd Machine Wars. We will also be looking to host more events on Sundays also.

To be kept up to date on scheduled events we encourage you to join the OFFICIAL GROUP at http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc.

Over the last few weeks we have been working on several different areas of the game. and while we are working to get a stable patch we wanted to share them with you.

Engine update status

As we dug deep into some performance issues on Windows and Linux we looked at the latest updates for our game engine to help resolve some of these problems (as well as provide new features). As such we made the decision that for the past few weeks, our programming team would put some new features on hold so we could do a major update that will benefit everyone.

While this meant that we were not able to put out updates to features like Faction Wars as quickly as we had initially hoped, the good news is that most of the issues that had been blocking updates are now resolved! So we should have a patch up soon.

Art Updates

While our programming team has been tackling this engine upgrade and performance issues the rest of the team has been hard at work in several other areas.

One of the most significant updates has been with updating the weapons and mechs that are currently in the game with more detailed geometry and textures. Though we are only part way thru these visual updates, we will be integrating this new content as we complete it. Here are a few shots including a updated Viper mech with new mesh detail, texturing, and a sampling of some of the weapon updates we have done.

Mech chassis updates

The art team has spent some time looking at the current mech chassis and starting adding more detail into the geometry and in the texturing. The Viper chassis (being the first mech that we made for the game) is the first to get a makeover.

New weapons textures

Below you see the latest Viper chassis with an assortment of the updated weapons models.

Is that a new hanger you see in the background? Why yes it is!

Weapons balancing updates

We have been lucky enough over the last couple months to be able to collect more data around the weapons and also see how different players outfit their mechs. During this time we have found some imbalance issues and have been working on updating all weapons to better fit their designed functionality.

Though not all weapons will change, we have touched about 70% of the values, with that we will be posted a detail of the changes once they are live. Why? Because any current configuration will likely be affected.

We have also added in some chassis specific power plants so configurations can get the custom power and system specifications it needs.

Faction Wars

Though not in the immediate upcoming patch, more Faction Wars functionality is coming very soon with the ability for individuals and squads to join Factions and the Faction interface to include initial functionality.

We will be holding a mock war event in a few weeks which we will post soon including the dates for the event!

Linux and SteamOS

Now that the engine upgrade is completed we can now finish the Linux/SteamOS client port. The initial release of the Linux client will be very early alpha, but with the new engine upgrade we have improved performance a good bit. For more info on the port please visit this forum post:

We want to thank everyone whom has shown their support for the game, and to help celebrate you, we are going to start looking thru posted screenshots and then share our favorites on the forums. The team would especially like to thank Sophisanimus for his extensive thoughts on the weapon balancing and of course dedication to the game. Thanks again, and we hope to continue to earn your support.

The next update is right around the corner, which will be followed by 2 more updates before the winter holiday.

We have been working on various parts of the game including:

New and updated missions

Weapons and mech balancing

new weapons

mech movement and cockpits

and Faction Wars….

Coming in version 0.0.6.6

In the upcoming patch version 0.0.6.6 we have working on improving performance so we can update visual distance in the game, reducing the amount of fog.

Why is this a big deal you may ask? We have added 2 new zoom levels for use with long range weapons, like the ARCs, LARBS and the NEW! sniper cannon which will be released in 0.0.6.6 .

Also coming in the next build is a new mission “Crashsite”, updates to the mech balancing, additional feedback when being attack, and many bug fixes.

And then?

Coming shortly after is something we are all excited about, and for this we will just let the picture speak for itself.

First person cockpits have been a long time coming , and the first iteration to make it back into the game is coming later in November. With this we will also support server settings to force cockpit only.

And last but not least we are hard at work on Faction Wars, with elements coming out over the next couple updates with the start of the persistent system coming soon..

Upcoming Events

We will be hosting more multi-player events in November, including a introduction to the Factions in three weeks. To be kept up to date on scheduled events we encourage you to join the OFFICIAL GROUP at http://steamcommunity.com/games/dhmc .

Max Gaming Technologies is pleased to announce that its latest mech game “Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps” is now available for Early Access for the PC platform through the Steam network. We invite all mech fans to come and join us during early access development to wage futuristic war by piloting a fully customizable 50 foot tall mechs into online battle and in the process take part in shaping “Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps” by providing feedback directly to the development team.

Throughout each update during the Early Access cycle new content will be added and enhanced to allow you to fight for personal glory or battle for territorial domination in a persistent online warzone with your friends in various unique battlefields and combat environments.

Sorry about the lack of posts but we have been working hard for the upcoming Early Access release of Dark Horizons: Mechanized Corps on Steam. More details to come on when the game will be available. To hold you over here is a new screenshot of our new map Ghost Town.

We finally closed in on the first round of UI layout and have finished the developer pass of the mech hanger where all the mech building magic takes place before entering the game. Here is a sneak peak at the newly redesigned mech hanger and you will notice new customization features including a secondary color picker, grunge for the extra dirty feeling, and an inventory of owned parts which will be available post Early Access release.
More updates next week along with a mech hanger tutorial.

Just a quick status update, we had a very small test and video session today with some of the testers whom have been playing Dark Horizons games for about 10 years. Good things were:

1) Had fun blowing the crap out of each other 🙂
2) Got some great video and screen shots for use in greating some media content
3) Saw some o fthe new chassis in action and can now tweak
4) Picked the first 2-3 mission environments to go out with Early Access

The Bad?

Found some issues that we have to fix before we can let more people into test, but hopefully can knock those out quickly and have a new build posted up on Steam.

As we wait for part 2 of the persistence update we thought it would be nice to share some of the things coming together for the Steam early access release.

First, always love to show off the new looks you can have with our new paint jobs etc… What we have added to the mech painter are the ability to paint different sections of the mechs multiple colors and an exciting new grunge feature which lets you weather you mech with battle damage!! As normal you can also choose from dozens of decals and insignia to personalize you mech.

Second is our integration progress with Steam we would like to preview the layout of your new menu system which we are designing to work well with Steam big picture mode as well as set it up to work with gamepads. We also now have the game authenticating with Steam and our multi-player backend!! (NOTE: Forgive our programmer art)

Coming next to our Steam integration and the final steps before launching into EarlyAccess is stats, leaderboards, achievements, and cloud storage for local content.